


Accidental Hero

by matrixlog



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidentally way angstier than I meant it to be, Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky's not great with kids, Eventual Smut, F/M, Flashbacks, Lots of Angst, Mystery (ish), Passively Suicidal, Past Abuse, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Tags May Change, he's working on it, or cats, or really civilian life, single mom, way down the line
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2020-12-27 10:20:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21117161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixlog/pseuds/matrixlog
Summary: Saving a little girl from a kidnapping shouldn’t be causing Bucky this much stress. But he didn’t need the attention that came from being the star witness in a crime. Especially now that the man who'd orchestrated the whole thing was in town, and threats lurked around every corner, behind ever door, inside every closet.But there was just one problem: the sheriffs were covering up the crime, those not involved were incompetent, a nine-year-old girl was displaying symptoms of acute stress response, the mother wanted him to investigate it, and Bucky's falling hard for her.Alright, so maybe it was more than one problem.





	1. Chances

Bucky was a careful man.

From making sure he went to the grocery store at quiet hours, to never lifting more the strongest men in the shipping and receiving section of the factory he worked at, to always keeping his head down enough that the bill of his baseball cap covered his eyes.

He performed his perimeter checks at seemingly random times each day, and he kept meticulous records in separate, labeled notebooks. The first, a red, leather-bound journal, was geared towards the progress he was making as he slowly recovered his memories, as he pulled himself free from the claws Hydra had left in his brain. He wrote down the new things he tried, the nightmares and the panic attacks.

The second, also leather-bound, in black, was his reconnaissance bible. The cars that seemed out of place. Logs of his runs and perimeter checks. Conversations about enhanced individuals, news reports, or anything that could be a path leading straight for him.

The last thing Bucky needed was a firefight in the middle of a small, largely conservative town in central Kansas where he’d probably be shot at by concerned civilians as well.

The black journal, early on, had a more detailed entry about this little town he’d moved into. About how the streets rolled up at nine, unless there was a football game, and the lights in the houses shut off at ten. It didn’t matter how many people worked third shift at one of the four factories or warehouses in town, their families closed up shop at home.

It did, however, assure him some privacy during his night runs – always around the same time, regardless of if he had work or not. There were no humans out and about while he ran, the light scent of tomato vines tugging at his nose as he passed one block. Truly, the most contact he had was with random animals – the stray dogs, the cats that roamed the streets, various wild animals – while he ran.

Animals were easier than humans.

They didn’t lie. They didn’t pretend to be something they weren’t.

Bucky never clocked in at his full speed. He knew there were still prying eyes around, could feel them burning into his back whenever he passed. Could see the orange glow of a cigarette from an old woman who sat on her porch, always awake, always outside, no matter the weather. Bucky had taken to calling her by the numbers on her house in his journal: 405.

Tonight, though, he’d ran the hill leading up to the apartment four times, attempting to feel something, _anything_, even if it was just the burn in his calves and thighs, the nibbling, biting autumn air in his lungs with each breath.

Rarely did Bucky feel this level of exertion any more, but when he did, he felt a mix of the physical stress on his body – however minor it might be compared to a regular, non-experimented on body – but he was reminded of the never-ending, torturous training exercises Hydra had put him through, and the emptiness in his chest became crushing nothingness, weighing on his consciousness.

He was a monster, simple as that.

As he approached his apartment building, still on the asphalt he preferred to run on, Bucky caught sight of an idling car, resting at the curb in front of the parking lot, approximately fifty meters from the front door to the main hall with the double-wide stairs.

His eyes narrowed as he realized the two lights above the door were out. They hadn’t been that way when he left. Yes, there was the possibility they’d both gone out while he was on his run, but that felt unlikely.

Coming to a halt behind a parked car in between two of the streetlamps, Bucky crouched, taking in as much of the situation as he could.

Three individuals were in the car, two in front, one in back on the driver’s side.

_Toyota Corolla. Dark blue. New. Kansas plates. Hatchback. _

He memorized the alphanumeric sequence before he realized what he was doing, the exact order of the letters and numbers bouncing around his skull as he watched the person in the backseat exit.

There were too many variables at play here.

He could rule out a football game or teenager returning from a date. It was Wednesday. No game. No teen in school would be on a date this late. There were, however, plenty of children in the apartment building, and he could make the logical assumption that a custody transfer was happening.

_But it was Wednesday. _

What kind of parents were forcing a child to switch housing at – Bucky looked down at the watch on his wrist, finding it reading 11:48.

Then again, this was the only apartment in town he could pay in cash each month without a credit card on file or even a credit check. There could be some other kind of business playing out.

Bucky frowned.

All his ideas felt too flimsy, and he raised his percentage estimating how fucked he was in this situation to a solid eighty-nine percent.

The man who’d stepped out of the backseat pulled his phone out, the blue glow lighting up his face – _Caucasian, long nose, small eyes, no facial hair, blonde_ – as he typed something out. Bucky ran his tongue over his teeth as he pulled his sleeves down over his arms, fishing out the glove he kept on his left hand from the pocket of his sweatpants.

Bucky leaned closer as the man turned back to his companions in the car, his voice carrying over the wind.

“She’s on her way down,” he said.

_Oh._

Maybe this wasn’t about him.

But, still, Bucky couldn’t deny how his insides twisted into a knot at having these strangers in an idling car in front of his apartment building. He couldn’t deny he’d feel safer if he knew what was going to play out with whoever was on her way down instead of returning to his top floor room. Bucky simply couldn’t. He needed to watch, to observe. To write this all down in his recon bible after it happened.

He drew on his glove as the seconds ticked by, excruciatingly slow, waiting on this mystery _she_ to make her way down and onto the sidewalk where this man his companions were waiting. Where she’d have to cross through a parking lot with most of the lights now dead when they hadn’t been earlier.

The man was pacing, his shoulders tense, as he kept checking his phone every ten seconds like clockwork, waiting for another message from the woman he was waiting on. Bucky didn’t like the anxiety rolling off the man in waves.

He’d seen some of the hands at work under stress before – it often didn’t end well. It often ended bloody or with orders screwed up. He’d seen injuries he hadn’t seen in a while, ones that normally had been caused by him. Not someone else’s negligence.

Bucky could sit still for ages, until the earth stood still and the plants reclaimed civilization, vines and moss crawling over his crouching form, but he didn’t need to tonight. No, the “woman” the trio was waiting emerged through the main entrance, her silhouette backlit by the hall lights inside as she pulled on a jacket.

Except she wasn’t a woman.

She was excruciatingly obviously a child.

Bucky’s teeth were on edge as this fact slammed into him like a freight train, twisting a knife in the knot in his gut, and he bit back the urge to deck the man on the sidewalk who was already turning back to his partners in the Toyota.

“Brat’s here,” he said, something dangerous playing in his words.

He couldn’t tell which of the many children from the apartment was picking her way towards the man on the sidewalk, zipping up her denim jacket as she wove through the cars, a little skip in her step, but the situation was wrong regardless. If it was a custody exchange he was witnessing, the other parent would be right there with the girl – not sending her on her own.

His heart was making each beat count behind his ribs, the muscle thudding into the bone, but he didn’t move. Bucky needed to watch. Going into any situation without the facts was too risky for a man wanted alive on every continent. And while he might wish he had a gun or a knife, at least Bucky was boasting something a thousand times more deadly: a vibranium arm.

Bucky continued to wait as the girl came towards the sidewalk, towards the light. His diet was composed of information and a healthy dose of paranoia.

It would be better to make sure this meeting wasn’t completely innocuous before he lost his shit and interjected where he didn’t belong.

The girl leapt over the damp grass, landing with ease on the sidewalk in a pool of lamp light, the baggy legs of her flannel pants rising up her thin shins as she looked up at the tall man waiting in the shadows. She was holding a small, white teddy bear in one hand, by the arm, and Bucky had to wonder why she brought it with her.

More importantly, though, Bucky had to wonder what his neighbor’s daughter was doing outside the apartment that always smelled of something baking, of warm spices and sweet cakes. He couldn’t remember the child’s name, let alone her mother’s, but the girl always waved at him when he happened to pass by, the collar of his jacket turned up around his face and baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.

_Shit._

A growing sense of wrong was pooling in his veins, a warning this situation was about to go to hell. All the little signs were playing out before him, like the false bravado in a child’s actions while her eyes held fear.

“Hello, Katerina,” the man said, the second word slipping into a faint Russian accent.

Bucky shoved down the panic that came with the reminder of Russia. The frozen tundra. The white hot pain that came whenever he screwed up. Being rewritten into someone else. Into a monster.

“Mr. Fluffy Bottoms?” Katerina asked, tentative.

Bucky may not know a lot about people of this century, about the nuances of how etiquette had changed, but that sense of _wrong_ was telling him this was only going to get ugly, traumatizing, if this played out how he thought it was.

Still, he needed to see if Katerina was going to get herself out of the situation before he did something reckless.

“That’s me!” Mr. Bottoms sang.

But his tone was wrong, too. He was trying to seem relaxed and happy at this meeting, but something patronizing was undercutting his words, playing at the fringes of his voice.

“Ready to go play?” he asked, gesturing towards the car with a nod.

_Play? _Even Bucky knew that word had two different meanings to the child and adult in this situation, and Bucky finally felt he was confronted with someone almost as evil as he was. Almost. He was hard to compete with, but at least he’d avoided hurting children – unless otherwise ordered.

“Are we gonna be out too late?” Katerina questioned, pulling her bear to her chest as her big blue eyes grew even wider, brows pulling together. Her resolve was wavering. Good. “Momma might get angry.”

“Oh, it’ll just be our lil secret, Katerina,” Mr. Bottoms replied, bending over at the waist as he put his hands on his knees to get closer to her level. That faint accent was back on Katerina’s name. Only her name. “Don’t worry.”

“I have school in the mornin’, though,” the little girl said, the equally little drawl tugging at her words.

Well, at least she was worried about school. Even if she was out here in the middle of the night without her mother knowing.

The fact that Mr. Bottoms wanted to take her to a secondary location and keep their “play” a _lil secret_ had Bucky’s veins on fire with a rage he hadn’t felt in years. He might be a mass murderer in a class of his own, but children were a different category that should never be touched, innocent blood that should never be spilled.

“Let’s go, man!” one of the men inside hissed, trying to keep his voice low, but Bucky heard him.

In the dark, behind the Ford Escape he’d tucked himself behind, Bucky was aware of all. From the way his neighbor’s daughter pulled one shoulder back to angle herself away from the man who loomed over her, to the way the man at the steering wheel was fidgeting in his seat, to the empty vastness of the small town’s streets and yards.

“But don’t you want to see the kittens?” Mr. Bottoms inquired. This time, his tone was strained, annoyance peppering his words.

This time, something seemed to click behind Katerina’s eyes, and she took a step back.

“I think I want to go back inside,” Katerina said softly.

_Good_, was all Bucky could think.

“Oh, fuck this,” Mr. Bottoms swore, and his hand darted forward, grabbing Katerina’s wrist.

A shriek left her mouth, disturbing the silence of the night. Her bear hit the ground, and Bucky couldn’t stay still any longer.

Bucky launched himself around the side of the small SUV, sprinting forward as the man attempted to wrestle the girl into the car, her spare hand shoving uselessly at the one wrapped around her wrist. Bucky crashed into Mr. Bottoms, yanking him free of Katerina, who stumbled to the ground with a pained cry.

The pair rolled along the sidewalk, tumbling with the momentum Bucky had built up, and the concrete scratched at the t-shirt he wore, little tears developing in the fabric. He threw his entire body weight to the side, flipping the pair so he straddled the hips of the would-be kidnapper as his lips pulled back in a silent growl.

“_No_,” he snarled, every muscle in his body begged to smash the bastard’s head against the sidewalk until his skull was fractured and brain matter oozed through the cracks, staining the concrete.

But Katerina was still there. And there were two more men to contend with.

So, instead, Bucky pulled his human hand back and sent a solid punch into the man’s jaw, well-placed to send the resulting ricochet bouncing off solid concrete, and the man’s eyes, a hazel with flecks of gold around the pupil, rolled back into his skull, blood dotting the sidewalk beneath his head.

Spinning, rising to his feet with ease, Bucky found the man who’d been in the passenger’s seat now struggling to get a screaming girl into the back of the car.

_Heavyset. Smells like cigarette smoke. Shaved head. Neck tattoo. Caucasian. _

“She doesn’t want to go with you,” Bucky hissed, catching the man’s attention.

He paused enough that Katerina was able to dig her small nails into the soft underside of his fingers, and Bucky repressed a smirk. She was getting forensic evidence. Something that would pay off once Bucky got her away from these men.

“This doesn’t concern you, asshole,” the man snapped.

This time, the smirk did pull at the corner of his lip, and Bucky moved quickly, remembering just before he threw the punch to dial back on his strength. He didn’t need to kill the man in front of Katerina. Hell, he was actively refraining from drawing the kind of attention that would bring.

Plus, he kind of liked his apartment.

His fist connected with the fat lining the man’s torso, angled upwards just enough to force the momentum into and under his ribs, and Bucky watched, time slowed down, as the man let go of Katerina’s wrist, the girl stumbling backwards as Bucky stepped between them.

The assailant threw a haphazard punch of his own that Bucky leaned back from, his gaze unfazed. His heart was already beating harder the moment he’d broken from his hiding spot, but being swung at by someone so much less of a threat than the normal caliber from his days under Hydra’s thumb didn’t raise his blood pressure.

Knowing it would be easy to dispatch the man swinging at him as well as grabbing the one behind the wheel, Bucky was still aware of Katerina watching the situation unfold.

“Dude, just deal with him!” the driver was shouting. “Get the fucking girl!”

“Run!” Bucky ordered over his shoulder, taking a step back to get some distance between him and the second man.

But then he felt a small hand at his back, little fingers bunching in the material of his shirt, and Bucky stiffened. Muscle memory was ready to grab what was clearly a tiny, trained assassin and throw them into the street, but, having not heard the running footsteps of Katerina retreating, the little section of his brain still capable of rational thinking informed him that hitting a child with either arm was a guaranteed way to incur the wrath of her mother – and that was much more formidable than the police force of a backwoods town.

The man produced a gun then – _.9mm_ – from the inside pocket of his jacket, and Bucky, found himself putting his human hand on Katerina’s back out of reflex, like he’d seen plenty of adults throughout the ages do with their children.

_Shit._

This just got more difficult.

“Give me the fucking girl,” the man ordered, one finger pressing off the safety, the other going for the hammer.

Bucky blinked, taking a deep breath.

He knew exactly what he needed to do to execute an escape plan, but between the variables of a small child about to be startled by gunfire and a strange neighbor picking her up, Bucky couldn’t pin down how well it was going to go. He couldn’t calculate the probable success percentage of this scenario.

“No,” he said simply.

Bucky whirled, scooping up Katerina in his human arm. In the same second as the man opened fire, Bucky threw up his metal arm, bullets pinging off and darting into other directions. Katerina pressed her face into Bucky’s neck, her tiny hands gripping his shirt, as she cried out, hot tears rolling down his collar.

He wanted to tell her to keep her head down, to balance on his arm, to keep her legs out of the line of fire, but yelling at a child no older than ten seemed less than ideal. He might not have much experience with children after deploying for the War, but even Bucky, as messed up as he was, knew this wasn’t a good idea.

In the parking lot, still being shot at – he was counting the bullets, waiting for the man to empty his clip – Bucky dove behind a someone’s banged up Mustang, crouching low as he deposited Katerina on the ground, the girl actively fighting letting go of his shirt.

“I need you to listen to me,” he told her, voice low, trying to come across as gentle as possible. It was a rather foreign concept.

She looked up, her eyes watery with tears, snot slimy under her nose. Katerina stared at him for a moment, and Bucky swallowed, wondered if she was going to start screaming again. That would be the last thing he needed.

Katerina nodded.

“Okay, I need you to crawl under the car,” he said, “stay on your belly and don’t make a sound.”

“What about you?” she asked, and Bucky was startled for a moment.

He wasn’t used to people caring about him in violent situations.

Before he could reply, the car that had been idling at the curb sped off, and Bucky let out a breath.

“Change of plans,” he said. “Let’s get you to your mom.”

Katerina lifted her hands, expecting to be picked up, and Bucky faltered for a moment. Carrying the girl to her apartment might seem like the right thing to a child, but coupled with the screaming and gunfire, he didn’t know if the mother would blame him somehow.

Still, at least his neighbor had seen him around over the last couple months, and Bucky reached down, picking up Katerina, using his left hand to do little more than balance her as he folded her against his side.

Bucky looked up as he approached the steps to the front door, and most of the lights in the building were on. He couldn’t see Katerina’s apartment – they were on the other side – and that only made Bucky nervous.

_Nervous._

He hadn’t been at all when getting shot at. When dealing with variables and confrontation. When throwing himself into this new situation. Returning a child that had almost been kidnapped made him nervous.

It might be considered odd, but not with everything Bucky had been through, not with his past.

Bucky climbed the stairs with ease, Katerina sniffling against his shoulder as he did so. She was oddly collected, oddly calm. But the shock probably hadn’t set in yet.

Top floor, down the left hall, Bucky knocked on the door across from his, angling slightly so Katerina would be able to see her mother without Bucky having his back to the woman. He might hate himself on a good day, but he wasn’t suicidal.

_Most of the time. _

The door was flung open almost instantly, and Bucky found himself face to face with his neighbor, a woman who, in appearance, didn’t look much younger than him. Her chocolate brown hair was pulled into a messy bun, and her glasses her sitting crooked on her nose, the style distinctly 1950s, he realized.

“Katerina,” she breathed a sigh of relief, barely glancing at Bucky.

“Mommy!” the girl cried, trying to push out of Bucky’s arms.

Bucky handed the little child over, his arm and torso suddenly cold from where she’d been pressed to him. His neighbor made eye contact with him then, as she rocked Katerina who was steadily growing louder in her cries. Recognition was instant, the relief palpable. She and her child had the same blue eyes, the freckled skin. There was a black smear on her jaw that Bucky doubted she knew about. Still, he prepared himself for the worst. 

“Holy – thank you!”

Oh. That wasn’t at all what Bucky had expected in return for getting Katerina back to her mother. More _what the hell did you do to my child_? and less thanks. Definitely less thanks.

He almost told her not to thank him, but he had something more pressing to tell her.

“I, uh, think you need to phone the police.”


	2. Stale Coffee

Bucky couldn’t remember the last time he had been in a police station. He knew for a fact, however, that he’d slaughtered every single person who’d been there. Now, present day, fully conscious, and unable to bury the memories behind any sort of vice thanks to a body that metabolized everything, Bucky’s heart was beating a mile a minute as he sat with his back exposed at a deputy’s desk, waiting for – some sort of fuckery to finish.

Based on the fact that Katerina and her mother, Salem, apparently, were still behind a closed door with one of the younger deputies in the station, he could surmise his freedom hinged on what questions arose after the mother and daughter’s interview was over.

Still, he’d feel much calmer about waiting if he could at least sit with his back to the wall than to an open room. Be able to track the comings and goings of deputies off to deal with the trucks on a Wednesday rolling into a Thursday, the teenagers breaking curfew.

While he might be playing an anonymous nobody, Bucky Barnes was still a fugitive. A killer. Sitting in a police station with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes, Bucky could only wish his every breath wasn’t being tracked by cameras in the ceilings, on the walls. This wasn’t the first time he found himself wishing he could change his appearance at will or turn invisible with the blink of an eye.

“Tell me again where ya work?” the deputy at the computer next to him said, pulling Bucky out of his thoughts.

“Grass Hollow,” Bucky answered, his voice unintentionally gruff.

The deputy gave a curt nod as he turned back to his report, hunting for each letter on his keyboard before jabbing at it with a meaty finger. Bucky slouched a little more in his chair, feet planted in case he needed to launch himself away, but he watched, curious. He’d never learned typing, but a faint memory tugged at his mind, reminding him of watching slender fingers dance over a typewriter.

Bucky let out a breath, the memory gone before he could drudge up more details. More and more of these bite-sized glimpses into his past were coming back, the longer he was out on his own, trying to keep himself undetected.

A door opened somewhere in the station, something Bucky probably wasn’t supposed to hear, and the deputy next to him looked up. Bucky stiffened at the sight, wondering if the man had the same abilities as him, the enhanced senses – and if so, it led to the question of how many other individuals with powers or technology were inhabiting a town of sixty thousand.

“Gideon,” the deputy said, and Bucky let himself breathe again, looking over his shoulder to find his neighbors and another deputy approaching the desk.

Salem was carrying Katerina, the little girl half-asleep with her arms wrapped around her mother’s neck. Tear tracks had dried and were glimmering in the fluorescent lighting. The mother, eyes red-rimmed, still had the same black smear on her jaw, though part of it was a murky grey where her own tears ran over it.

“Be right there,” the other deputy – _Gideon_, a logical leap could be made – replied, gesturing to a desk where he grabbed a handful of papers off the printer.

Bucky turned back around, deciding it was better not to watch his neighbors' every move and interaction after already throwing himself into the spotlight. He’d still be able to hear everything going on, and Bucky was clearly still going to be sitting for a while as the deputy typing up the report searched for the _A_ key in front of him.

Behind him, Katerina was protesting in the way exhausted kids did when their parents had any sort of business to attend to that wasn’t putting them to bed, and she whined, earning a tiny _tck_ from Salem. Papers shuffled, rustling gently against themselves, and a pen uncapped.

“Kat, hey, I need to sign a few things, and then I _promise_, we’re going to go home and go to sleep,” Salem chided lightly.

_Kat._

Not Katerina.

It gave Bucky brief pause to hear a nickname that wasn’t obviously Russian. Pause that turned to relief for the continued to discomfort that only amplified whenever he was reminded of the girl’s name. He could only dread that Salem’s son had a similarly Slavic name, but maybe the boy also had a shorthand name they used. That he could denote him as in his journals. That wouldn't remind him of the harsh language that he never wanted to speak or hear again. 

He didn’t want to go so far as to call it praying, but Bucky was profusely _hoping_ that was the case for the son Salem had rushed to ask one of the neighbors to watch, the child blessedly asleep the entire time.

“Katerina, you will _not_ bother him.”

Well. It was nice while it lasted.

“Why can’t Mr. James sleep over?” Katerina was protesting.

The deputy next to Bucky shot him a look, and Bucky let his confusion seep into his expression, raising an eyebrow as he looked back over his shoulder, turning fully in his seat. Why would the child want him to stay the night…?

“I’ll print the papers over there, Deputy Smith will know where they need signed,” he offered. “I mean. If you want.”

While the correct etiquette of the situation was lost to Bucky, it seemed expected that he join his neighbors at Deputy Smith’s desk, and Bucky gave a nod he could only hope came across as thanks, standing from the chair and grabbing his coat off the back.

He’d managed to find the exact copy of the shirt he’d already been wearing while jogging, switching it for the Swiss cheese-looking one, the left arm riddled with bullet holes and rips where they’d bounced off his metal arm, the vibranium impervious to something as mundane as a civilian handgun.

Bucky wasn’t sure if Salem had even noticed the change in the tumultuous state of emotions she was currently riding out.

“James!” Katerina called out as he maneuvered through the aisle, the deputies preparing for the shift change and dealing with an unprecedented shooting leaving their workplace messy.

Bucky almost bolted at the use of his actual first name, but the use of something relatively generic and familiar to him made responding naturally that much easier for him. Made his few conversations that much more normal. Still, he couldn’t deny the little voice in the back of his head that questioned the choice every single time he heard _James_ spoken to him.

The girl darted forward before Bucky could get much further, Salem starting to say something as she turned, but the child was faster. Katerina crashed into Bucky’s side, her face pressed into his torso just above his hip bone. Bucky’s eyes went wide, arms jutting up and away from the child currently touching him. His heart was pounding behind his sternum, and the number of variables and uncertainties almost made him want to pry her off him.

“_Fucking Christ on a shit cracker_.”

It took him a fraction of one of his thundering heartbeats to realize Salem wasn’t cursing in English in front of her child, and he looked up at the mother who was running a hand down her face. The French flowed so easily from her tongue that Bucky wondered if that was her mother language.

“Katerina,” Salem said slowly, taking a step towards Bucky and the child currently causing his panic and discomfort. “You need to ask before hugging people, remember? You need to make sure they’re okay with it.”

And Bucky most certainly was not okay with this contact.

Katerina’s little fingers tightened in the fabric of Bucky shirt, but she pulled back enough to look up at him, chin digging into his side. Her eyes were big, boring into his like she could see every sin etched onto his soul. All the horrible things he’d ever done. The atrocities. The stray bullets he didn’t care who they hit.

_No._ The Soldier didn’t care who they hit.

“Thank you for saving me,” Katerina said.

“I – I’m glad you’re okay.”

It felt clunky in his mouth, but Bucky didn’t know how else to respond. _You’re welcome_ in reply to something he had originally watched play out just to make sure he hadn’t been found, his motivations purely selfish, didn't feel adequate. But, then again, leaving Katerina to be shoved into a car by a man who was clearly indicating events to come were going to be entirely out of anyone’s control wasn’t something he could allow.

The hum of the printer pulled Bucky from his discomfort, and Katerina unwound like nothing at all had occurred, returning to her mom who was looking at Bucky with something he couldn’t quite understand.

“Ah, Mr. Gardner, can you sign these real quick?” Deputy Smith asked, looking over at him as he scooped the papers up from the tray. “After that, I just want to ask you one more thing, and you’re good to go.”

Bucky nodded, finishing his journey through the desks to arrive next to Deputy Smith, Salem stepping aside. He bent over, taking the pen offered to him to sign the partially faked name he’d paid to have an identity forged for when he was in Europe briefly after the incident in DC. His hand was steady, not even briefly trying to write the wrong last name.

“Thank you,” Deputy Smith drawled, pulling the papers away from Bucky as Salem picked up her tired daughter, and the deputy seamlessly shifted his attention to her. “Miss Kristoff, thank you for your time, we’re done for the night. If you need anything – at all – for anyone in your family, you have my card.”

The title in front of Salem’s name gave Bucky a moment’s pause, but, then again, this new century was full of women shucking off the societal expectations thrust upon them for hundreds of years. It did, however, confirm that he’d never seen anyone else helping Salem with Katerina or her son. Still, _Miss_ pricked something in his mind, something demanding answers to the question of why three men were trying to take a little girl.

Other than a very painfully obvious one.

“Night, Mr. James!” Katerina called as Salem turned to go, saying a quick goodbye to the deputy.

“Night,” Bucky said lamely, raising his human hand in a small wave to the child.

“So, Mr. Gardner, Katerina says the bullets bounced off your arm,” Deputy Smith drawled, turning around in his chair to look up at Bucky. It took everything in him not to turn his face away. “She says you moved like a – oh, how’d she put it. Like a superhero.”

Bucky didn’t suppress the smirk that played at his lips, thoroughly amused with a child’s innocent declaration, her narrow view of heroism. He was far from a hero.

“They weren’t very good shots,” Bucky lied. No, the bullets had hit their target, his arm, but they hadn’t hit Katerina. “And everything seems more impressive to a child afraid for her life.”

Deputy Smith considered the answer, something disbelieving in his eyes, but Bucky was a better liar than Smith was a cop. Still, he needed to be _human_. Normal. As strange as that notion seemed, but if he wanted to keep his nice apartment and easy work, the charade needed to remain as real and tangible as possible.

Smith weighed and measured Bucky, his gaze never wavering, his eyes searching every pore on Bucky’s face. Unwavering. An unfeeling smile played at his lips, and Bucky willed his expression to stay the same even as a bead of sweat trailed down the back of his neck, cold on his warm skin.

While he might be playing at civilian life, at having no secrets that every foreign power would want to string him up for, that didn’t stop Bucky’s training from scratching at his throat and begging him to punch out the deputy’s lights, incapacitate every person in the station and flee.

He’d heard Antarctica was lovely this time of year, maybe that would finally be a quiet place to hide.

“Children,” Deputy Smith chuckled. “They tend to see the best in us, huh, Mr. Gardner?”

A chill swept through Bucky’s veins, the words hitting a little too close to home. Even before he’d signed himself up for war, he wasn’t exactly a saint. Always bouncing between beds – whether his or a different girl’s – always drinking more than he should and breaking plenty of society’s unwritten laws. He wasn’t something for children to find the best in – let alone decent.

“That’ll be all tonight, Mr. Gardner. I have your information – though, I do find it surprising you don’t have a cell phone.”

“Guess I’m old fashioned,” Bucky shrugged.

Outside, free of the stench of stale coffee and tobacco lingering on sun-hardened skin, Bucky pulled his coat around him, scanning the parking lot quickly, but his eyes fell over the cherry red paint of his neighbor’s Mustang. He tried to come up with the year for the model, but he’d been awake so sporadically in the late ‘60s that pinpointing when exactly hers came from only made his head fuzzy.

But the car wasn’t what gave him pause.

No, Salem was leaning against the trunk, her face in her hands, as her shoulders shook. Through the back windshield, he could see Katerina’s head, the girl clearly asleep in the backseat. Salem was doing her best to be silent, careful not to wake her sleeping daughter, but the sobs were just loud enough that Bucky could hear them from where he stood on the sheriff station’s stoop.

Slowly, trying to think of what was _normal_ in this situation – and there really needed to be a guidebook; _So You Just Saved Your Neighbor’s Kid from Certain, Untold Doom_ – Bucky licked his lips, taking measured steps down the steps to remain silent, giving Salem her space to run the course of her emotions, but she looked so broken, so distraught. Her world and sense of safety had been shattered, and it tugged at Bucky’s heart.

It tugged at something buried and broken.

“Salem?” he called out.

Bucky had played most of the night on chances and unknowns so far, might as well continue. A little adrenaline and lack of contingencies was great for keeping a nearly hundred-year-old man on his toes.

She looked up, wiping her face with slender fingers, and Bucky saw then that there were black marks on the tips of the fingers on her right hand. Desperation and something akin to self-hatred played in her eyes as she placed where the voice was coming from, a quick flash of fear on her features.

“James,” she said softly as Bucky continued to approach. “I-I don’t even know where to start.”

“You don’t have to.”

Really, she didn’t. He didn’t need or deserve an ounce of thanks. He had enough red in his ledger, operated in enough of a karma deficit, that one good deed didn’t need the thanks. The weight of his soul was so far in the negatives, plummeting into Hell with all that he’d done, that this hadn’t cancelled out anything at all. Salem didn’t need to waste her breath on someone like him.

“But I do,” she persisted. Bucky was in front of her now, and Salem moved to touch his arm, and he took a step back out of instinct, her hand meeting nothing but empty air. “I’m sorry. I – I owe you everything. What kind of mother am I that I can’t even keep track of one of my kids when I’m _awake_, y’know?”

“It’s not your fault.”

There. That was the right answer. He knew that one, and it slipped from his tongue with ease.

Salem bit back a choked laugh, her eyes brimming with tears behind her glasses. The messy bun she’d been sporting when the night started had drooped, even more pieces loose around the nape of her neck and framing her face.

“Please just – let me do something to _try_ to show you how grateful I am,” Salem tried again. “I bake, if that’s your thing. I could make you something?”

_Poison. Tiny, improvised bomb in a pie. What are you doing, man? You can’t take food from this woman._

But Bucky had a nagging sweet tooth that had been a thorn in his side since abandoning Hydra, always begging for something when he made his grocery runs, whenever he passed a café or bakery. As he got further away from the training that intensely strict about eating for nutrition only, Bucky had begun to allow himself the occasional nibble, but sweets were for special occasions. Were for puppets who hadn’t murdered throes of people.

“You really don’t have to do that,” Bucky said, keeping his voice low. “I just did what anyone would.”

Salem swallowed, her mouth moving as she tried to word whatever tumbled through her mind. She glanced behind her, at Katerina’s sleeping form, through the windshield, and she took a deep breath.

“You’re the one who did, though, and I keep – keep thinking about what would’ve happened if you hadn’t been there-“

Her voice broke off as a sob snapped her words in half, one hand covering her mouth as she looked away from Bucky. Salem had been rubbed raw, every nerve exposed, and Bucky sucked a breath down around his teeth.

Carefully, like he wasn’t sure which of them would shatter, he put a hand on Salem’s shoulder, cognizant of how much pressure he was putting on the joint. If he was going to snap off her arm without thinking.

Salem looked up, trying to smile at him. Trying to put a brave face on. Briefly, Bucky wondered how long she’d been a single parent. If the wound was still fresh given the young age of her son.

“I won’t stop you from making anything,” he said. “But, really, I’m just glad Katerina is okay.”

Bucky couldn’t stop himself from dropping into a low accent on the girl’s name, the Russian familiar and toxic on his tongue. A nausea-inducing jolt shot through him as he squeezed Salem’s shoulder involuntarily, but she didn’t flinch or show any signs of pain.

“It’ll be a surprise, I guess,” Salem laughed wryly. “Hey, you want a ride? We’re going back to the same building.”

“I’d prefer to walk,” Bucky said truthfully. A notion that pulled a weight off his shoulders as he took his hand back. Truth was so rare for him anymore. 

“Maybe you can save someone else’s kid. Go be an accidental hero all over again.”


	3. Maksim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't speak Russian, but, to the best of my knowledge, this is the translation of the words used. If I'm wrong, please let me know so I can fix it!
> 
> Kiska: kitten  
Kroshka: little one  
Shlyukha: whore

Very rarely did Salem take time off work, but her small family mattered infinitely more than a pop quiz to see who did the reading and a lecture spanning the remaining one and a half class periods for the rest of Thursday and Friday.

She didn’t sleep much that night, as the Earth progressed around the sun, light slowly blooming behind the curtains in her bedroom. Both her children, the younger Dimitri and older Katerina, were in bed around her, the boy sound asleep on his stomach as Salem wrapped herself around her daughter as she whined and whimpered in her dreams.

Sleep did not come for Salem in more than ghosting touches and fleeting kisses. The world was silent, a sharp contrast to the gunshots and the sounds of her daughter’s screams from a few short hours ago. Screams that embedded themselves into Salem’s subconscious, echoing inside her skull every time she closed her eyes.

By five, she was already crawling out of bed, careful not to disturb the two children sleeping soundly, Katerina finally lulled into a state of peace. Bruising was already developing on her wrist where she’d been grabbed the worst, and the urge to puke rolled through Salem’s stomach, a mockery of when she’d been pregnant with Katerina and the morning sickness had lasted for months on end.

Her thoughts drifted to the neighbor across the hall, to a man she probably hadn’t even had a real conversation with in the handful of months he’d lived in the building. She’d tried, really. Tried to be a good neighbor. But their lives didn’t intersect beyond early mornings when Salem was wrangling two children that had no interest in being awake out the door on their way out as James was returning home.

As Salem went about getting ready for the day, cleaning off yesterday’s makeup and the inky smears on her face from grading papers, she tried to conjure up a way to properly repay James for what he’d done. She rifled through gift ideas, through possible recipes in her head. Anything that could even display a fraction of the gratitude in her heart.

But there wasn’t.

If Katerina had gotten in that car with those men, Salem knew in her gut she would have never seen her daughter again.

Salem bit down on her toothbrush, the bristles stabbing into her gums, at the thought, her jaw clenching. Hot tears pricked her eyes, ready to fall over her puffy under eyes and onto her cheeks.

While the thought might be entirely true, that didn’t mean it had any business showing up first thing in the early hours of dawn.

Taking a slow breath through her nose, Salem eased her bite off her toothbrush, leaning her head out from the bathroom to check on the status of her kids. Dimitri was still cocooned in his pile of blankets, messy crop of blonde hair the most obvious feature as he splayed out on the mattress, and Katerina was curled protectively around herself, a small furrow in her brow that tugged at Salem’s heart, that made her grip the wall for support as her legs turned to jelly.

_They’re safe. You’re safe. Breathe._

Yes. Breathe. She couldn’t face her day, couldn’t face the phone call she needed to make if she passed out from oxygen deprivation.

Salem couldn’t protect her children if she didn’t remember to breathe.

When Salem was finished in the bathroom, applying just enough makeup to feel like herself, that she used like a bulletproof shield every single day, she exited, running her fingers through her messy curls to work out the worst of the tangles, too tired to do more. She returned to her bedroom, checking the time on her phone. Even if she wanted to put the kids in a bunker and hide forever, Salem couldn’t just – run away. She had to be an adult. To be a rock.

Out in the living room, Salem left the door partially open, just enough to be able to listen for movement or Katerina crying out in her sleep, and she started scrolling through the list of contacts in her phone, down through the names until she settled on the _I_s. Her chest tightened at the prospect of calling her children’s father, but there was no way Salem could leave him in the dark after something so monumental had happened.

She had to tell him – even if this information was something that could be used against her.

A decent enough lawyer could spin a believable tale that the previous night’s events had all happened because Salem wasn’t a competent enough parent, that she was neglectful, and that the children weren’t safe with her.

Pausing in front of the Keurig, Salem shut her eyes, resisting the urge to slam the phone down on the counter.

_No_. She’d fucked up, sure, but she wasn’t neglecting Katerina and Dimitri – she wasn’t a bad parent. She wasn’t.

And Salem would keep telling herself that until she believed it, until the awful darkness eating her soul since she’d heard the screams and gunshots and realized Katerina wasn’t in her room went away.

After two cups of coffee and a quick email shot off to the substitute for her history classes, Salem returned to her contacts, went back to the _I_s, picking through the short list of names before settling on the name of her ex-husband. Her thumb hovered over the name, trepidation lining her veins like ice along a window, but, perked up by caffeine, she managed to press it and the call button on the next screen.

With each passing second, each ring of the phone in her ear, Salem’s heart thrummed harder in her throat, waiting on her own personal demon to answer.

“It’s a little early over there, isn’t it, Salem?” he said in lieu of greeting. The accent she’d long come to associate with blind, drunk rage and a fist flying by her head to connect with the wall flooded the sound waves between the phone and her ear. The words she needed died on her tongue, throat tight and dried out.

“Maksim – we need to talk,” Salem said slowly, focusing a little too hard on the pattern in the counter top.

“If you’re asking for money, _kiska, _my accountant has been a little behind in bill keeping. I’m sure he’ll get to the transfer soon.” His tone was so dismissive, so unconcerned, and that _pet name_ was back like nothing had ever happened. Like the pair had never sat in court, had never had lawyers breaking apart every aspect of their lives.

_And did he really just say the check was in the mail-?_

“Understand two things, Maksim,” Salem hissed, anger alive and well in her blood, rushing through her body with a sure-fire heat. “I don’t give a _shit_ about your money, and I’m not someone you can call a pretty name and have bend to you.”

The first point was a blatant lie. Salem’s life would ease so much with the child support and alimony she was supposed to be receiving, mandated by court several years back. A new winter coat for Dimitri; supplies for a class full of farm kids in an underprivileged county in a state with a decimated education budget; worst of all, Salem would need to find a way to pay for therapy for Katerina, to help her process what had happened.

Maksim _tsk’d_ in her ear, the sound wet as his tongue clicked against his teeth.

“Oh, _kroshka_, would it kill you to be nice to me?” Maksim practically purred.

“_Would it kill you not to be a cheatin’, cock-suckin’ bastard?_” Salem countered in French, easily slipping into the other language without a second thought. Her hand clenched around the edge of the counter, tendons stark against the skin suit of her appendage, and each digit threatened to pop off with how tight she was gripping.

Carefully, as Maksim laughed in her ear, Salem took a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut. This conversation wasn’t going at all how she wanted, but it was going exactly how she expected. They hadn’t been capable of having a proper, civil conversation in years, so why start now?

“We need to talk,” Salem repeated, her jaw clenched and teeth fritted together. “There was an incident last night, and – “

“Why the _fuck_ didn’t you start with that?” Maksim interrupted, immediately going on the offense as his voice went low and dangerous, threatening and growling. “Are my kids okay? Fuck’s sake, Salem!”

“If you’d let me explain,” she said slowly, trying not to let his tone get to her, even if that was exactly what she wanted to let happen. Her hand was still clenched tight around the counter’s edge, and the entire limb was shaking. “Do you want to listen, or do you want me to email that pretty secretary of yours?”

The silence was more than enough answer.

She took a steadying breath, finding balance in the still air that hadn’t yet been graced by children’s laughter, hadn’t been punctuated by the smell of sugar and cinnamon, and Salem tried to keep her emotions in check, her approach to talking about something that happened six hours ago clinical and unfeeling.

When she was done, Salem had to lean against her counter for support, wrist bumping the basket she kept the single servings of coffee in. Hot, angry tears burned in her eyes, a veritable storm brewing.

“You’re their fucking _mother_!” Maksim shouted, exploding after Salem was done, and his words choked her from thousands of miles away. “You’re supposed to _protect _them since the useless courts won’t give me custody!”

“Don’t yell at me, Maksim,” Salem ordered, her voice calm even if everything inside her was going to pieces and her limbs were threatening to give out on her. “We’re both well-aware of why you don’t have custody, and it’s every police report I ever filed.”

Through the crack of her bedroom door, the tiny whine of a sleeping four-year-old sounded, and Salem’s mouth quirked in a frown as she slowly peeled her fingers off the edge of the counter, each muscle protesting as she loosened her grip and the tendons lowered back into place. If she was going to have this conversation – one that would probably end with her cursing a hundred times over in French – she needed to go out to the hallway.

“You don’t get to criticize my parenting when you haven’t spoken to Katerina since the divorce, and Dimitri doesn’t even remember what you look like,” Salem went on, flexing out her hand as it throbbed with pain. Undoing the locks on the door, she added, “They only know you as the man who sends crap they don’t even care about for their birthdays and Christmas. If you bothered to try to know your children at all, you’d know Dimitri doesn’t like the _Cars_ franchise and Katerina has no interest in horses.”

Maksim exploded in a spew of Russian, most of it flying by Salem’s understanding, only the occasional word grasped. She flinched, and her hand slid off the doorknob, too loud in the quiet apartment, and Salem whipped back to look through the crack into the bedroom to check for movement, but Dimitri and Katerina weren’t stirring.

It’d been years since this sort of explosive anger was directed at her. Even when parents had been mad when their child couldn’t participate in sports because of their own failing grades, they didn’t scare her like the yelling coming through the phone’s speaker, the volatile Russian growing more and more enraged the longer he was allowed to work himself up.

“Stop,” she tried, a soft plea, as she slipped into the hall. The hall was warmer than Salem’s apartment, and she pushed up the sleeves of her sweater as she leaned against the wall, her apartment door opened next to her. “I don’t speak – I can’t – “

Salem broke off into a string of curses, the French spoken softly as she was still well aware the rest of the world was trying to sleep, that her children were trying to sleep. Well aware that if Katerina or Dimitri heard her swearing in English, they’d parrot the words, and the last thing Salem needed, to add to her stress, was one of them running around saying _shit_ or _fuck_.

“Who would’ve thought in all the years I _wasted_ on you that you couldn’t be bothered to learn my mother tongue?” Maksim sneered, easily pivoting from a brutal parade of his Slavic tongue to a collected tone. “I learned French for you, _shlyukha._”

Katerina was thrust aside for old wounds to be picked at, for poison kisses and hospital waiting rooms. The phone call was no longer about attempted kidnapping, about the bruise on Katerina’s wrist, about stolen innocence. It was a rehashing of every old fight, of every night when someone was a little too drunk, a little too stressed. Every word coming out of Salem and Maksim’s was ancient, practiced drama, a script the two had been playing out for most of Salem’s adult life, only just breaking out in the last couple of years.

Their squabbling had thoroughly derailed the original conversation, the very reason Salem had been forced to call Maksim, and Salem was stuck in a tumultuous storm, adrift in an ancient sea, as she was forced to try to push back against every buried memory that hadn’t haunted her in recent times.

“_Stop_,” she tried again, voice a little stronger, a little harsher. “This isn’t about us. Don’t you get that?”

Down the hall, someone stepped down on the squeaky step in the stairs, a warning in the empty hallway, and Salem grimaced to herself, turning her face upwards to the ceiling. _Great_.

“You know what does matter, Salem?” Maksim growled, his voice low, everything about his tone collected, and Salem’s blood ran cold as the hair on the back of her neck rose. “Huh, Miss _Kristoff_?”

The use of her maiden name from her ex-husband drained all color from her face, down her exposed throat, and Salem squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to will away the debilitating terror that left her curled up on her doorstep like a teenager all over again, desperate for something or someone to make it go away.

“If a single hair on Katerina or Dimitri’s head comes to harm, I will make you regret ever being born,” Maksim threatened. “Do you fucking understand me?”

Salem tried to put up a blockade, to find the materials to build a fort around herself, between little Rose River, Kansas and Beijing – if he was even still there – but her supplies were shoddy, her defenses easily overrun with a simple shove, and she sucked down a breath, those footsteps on the stairs growing ever closer.

“I will fucking send my men out there if you can’t get your fucking shit together,” he added. “Now, good goddamn morning, Salem, I need to go have dinner with an investor.”

Maksim Ivanov hung up, and dead air greeted Salem, a soft nothingness that meant little to her after such blatant threats were shoved down her throat.

While she’d expected the call to go poorly, had even been betting on it, she hadn’t expected her ex-husband to be quite as overt as he was that morning. The insidious nature of the beast was unleashed with just a few words, and she reached an unsteady hand up to her throat, fingers tentatively prodding at every tendon and muscle and vein as she stared numbly at the wall across from her.

In the back of her head, though, Salem couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Maksim was right. Just how incompetent and useless of a mother was she?. How much of what had happened was her fault?

Before those thoughts could fester and infect everything they came in contact with, the footsteps reached the landing, pausing briefly on hardwood that had seen better days, and Salem blinked, clearing her vision, as she looked to the side, finally pulling her phone from her ear.

There, a backpack slung over one shoulder, was James, surveying the woman sitting outside her apartment with the door cracked.

He stared down at her from the end of the hall, already walking again, brows pulled low in confusion as he looked at her, eyes flicking over her face and down to the hand resting at her throat. Something clawed at her brain as she returned the look, the bill of his hat casting a harsh shadow over his eyes. Something familiar she couldn’t place.

“Are you – okay?” he asked, pausing near his front door.

Every muscle in his body was tense, ready to flee, and Salem suppressed the urge to laugh. She knew that posture oh so well, could feel the phantom tension cording through her own muscles as she sat on the floor, mindlessly flipping the phone back and forth in her hands.

“It’s, uh, nothin’,” she lied, dropping his gaze momentarily before looking back up. “My kids’ dad is a dick, y’know? But it’s – it’s nothin’.”

“Sorry,” James murmured, eyes flicking over to his door, and Salem took a deep breath.

_Of course._

“Hey, you don’t have to talk to me,” she deflected, though having someone sit with her for a bit – even if they weren’t going to talk much – wasn’t something Salem was about to protest. “It’s early, and, I mean, last night was – a lot. I get it if you want some time to – I don’t know, recoup?”

James didn’t answer right away as he licked his lips, shrugging to himself. A war raged in his crystal blue eyes, something Salem saw everyday in some of her students. The ones who might go home to chaotic lives. The ones who only got a moment of rest when they were falling asleep during a lecture. The ones who might have a situation she wasn't mandated to report, but the ones Salem would still worry about, nonetheless.

Without a word, James moved to stand across from her before lowering himself to the ground, his movements fluid, not something she’d expect from a man of his stature. He crossed his legs as he pulled his backpack to the side, patting the top as if to reassure himself it was still there. While he sat perfectly straight, the epitome of finishing school posture, Salem was still curled around herself, twisted to the side.

“Don’t sleep much,” he said. “I work nights, and yesterday was my day off.”

That was probably the most information about himself that Salem had gotten about James. She hardly knew anything about him, and not for lack of trying. At first, she’d tried to watch for him, tried to intercept him with a plate of cookies – because who could resist gooey, melty, chocolatey goodness? – but when prep for the school year picked up, Salem had simply left them at his door, a note attached on the saran wrap over the paper plate.

Before she could reply, her phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked down, a deep frown pulling at her lips, the skin in her forehead folding like the summer clothes she’d tucked away for herself and the kids. An email from Maksim – and not his secretary – was waiting for her, and she typed a quick four-digit code to unlock the device.

_I’m giving you a week to get me some fucking answers before I’m flying out to that shithole._

“I hope you drown on your fucking vodka, Maksim,” Salem grumbled in French, his name spat with venom compared to the rest of the language she’d learned in high school.

“Do you often wish death on people or is it just Maksim?”

Salem nearly flew out of her skin as she jumped, her grip on her phone slipping as the device clattered to the wood below her. Eyes darting up, she found James studying her, jaw clenched and his own eyes looking over the phone that fell from her grasp. Swallowing down her heart at the sudden, perfect French greeting her, she sucked down a breath.

“Didn’t realize you spoke French,” she deflected, transitioning back to English, picking up her phone and sliding it in her back pocket, not bothering to look at it or clean it off. That could wait.

“Learned it for a job,” James shrugged, but something dark undercut his words. Something that disappeared into an almost-forced neutrality the moment he spoke again. “Who is Maksim?”

Salem didn’t answer right away, toying with the words to describe him. Trying to put together the words that wouldn’t make James up and run. Words that seemed as lost as Katerina’s sense of safety.

“No one good,” she said finally, voice small.

Before James could respond, and it was clear by the look in his eyes that he wanted to, tiny feet padded closer, her front door opening. The conversation derailed, and Salem twisted, finding Dimitri rubbing his right eye as he looked over at James, the other hand twisted in the front of his pajama shirt.

“Hey, lil man,” Salem greeted, false cheer eager in her voice. “What’re you doin’ up?”

“Hungry,” Dimitri said simply, forcing his way into Salem’s lap, messy hair tickling her nose.

That earned a genuine smile from her as her son tucked his head under her chin, barely paying attention to the man he didn’t know across the hall from them. Her heart thudded in her chest, painful, engorged, with love for the small child that smelled like her sheets, like the transfer of her perfume after a long day.

Salem looked over at James, smile still playing at playing at her lips, as she tried to smooth out the mess of icy blonde hair Dimitri had inherited from his father.

“Kids,” she said simply, but her tone was warm, fond. “This is Dimitri, by the way. Dimitri, this is James. He’s our neighbor.”

Dimitri finally looked over at James, big green eyes surveying him with a maturity not afforded to most four-year-olds. Looking up, Salem found the grown man meeting Dimitri’s gaze with that same forced neutrality, but there was something to it that made it clear he wasn’t sure what to do in the situation.

“Bucky,” James said to her son. “Most people call me Bucky.”


End file.
